ethics
Did Mashable cross a line?
Jun 29th
Yesterday, something happened on Mashable which illustrates one of the biggest threats to the social web, to business, and maybe even democracy. I’m really interested to see what you have to say about this incident. Let’s start with the lead paragraph from their post:
The Italian Windows website “Windowsette” somehow managed to get a hold of a super-secret, highly confidential PowerPoint presentation outlining many of Microsoft’s goals and plans for Windows 8. Apparently this sensitive data (complete with UNDER NDA watermarks) was just found sitting around the Internet.
If you haven’t been around the corporate world, NDA stands for “non-disclosure agreement.” This means that whoever had these slides had signed a legal document to keep them secret.
The Windowsette site said it learned of this leak from “Andrea Martinelli.” I have no idea who that is but it seems unlikely she just found secret internal Microsoft documents “sitting around the Internet.”
So here are the questions I have for you:
- Mashable has become the journal of record for the social web. Maybe they’ve been trained as journalists, maybe they’re not. Does that make a difference?
- Is it ethical for them to publish a “super-secret, highly confidential” internal document that could be extremely damaging to Microsoft?
- Is it responsible to report on a document whose source was a single associate of an obscure website in Italy? How can we even know these slides are real? Isn’t it easy to create official-looking PowerPoint slides?
- The Mashable post was tweeted almost 1,000 times and included in about 500 Facebook sites. For many people, this article has become “the news.” What are the implications when non-journalists create the news?
I’ll tip my hand here and say that my undergrad was in journalism and I believe this institution is essential to democracy. What’s going on in most blogs today is not journalism. Usually that’s OK. But with the dramatic decline of the traditional press, whatever we have left on blogs is going to become our de facto news of record. Like Mashable.
In the end, this incident will have a shelf life of about one day and it’s easy to let a big company like Microsoft be our target. But what if this unsubstantiated piece of news was about your secret new product development? Your company? Your congressman? A terrorist threat in your community?
What if it was about you?
Why it’s ridiculous to argue about ghost blogging
Jun 22nd
It seems like “ghost blogging” — the practice of penning posts for others – is always under attack.
Jon Buscall wrote a fine piece about it recently as did Mitch Joel.
Philosophically I agree with them. In a pure and perfect world executives should write their own copy.
But practically speaking I don’t agree.
Here’s why.
- It’s not a pure and perfect world. Ghost writing is going to happen and it always has. Wishing and pontificating will not make it different. So why not at least do it well?
- Most executives don’t have the time or ability to blog consistently and effectively. So if they don’t get help, it just won’t happen. Isn’t it a good idea to help bring their ideas to life?
- Personal connection and “community” is probably less important to somebody at the “rockstar” level of chairman. I know this will get hollers from the crowd that community is “everybody’s business” — and to some extent that is true, but again, I’m being practical. Most CEO’s are not being compensated to build community through a blog.
- The chairman does not pen his own speech, yet nobody questions that they own it. They don’t write the shareholder’s letter in the annual report, yet this is deemed as authentic. Do you think Former GE Chairman Jack Welch sat there and pecked out his own book? And yet it is seen as his.
So why do so many people seem to want to put blogs in a different class of writing? In the world of corporate communications it could be argued that blogs are even less important and critical than a major speech or a document being submitted to the SEC. Why are people on a quixotic mission to fight against reality?
Here’s a better solution. Establish guidelines to have an effective ghost blog in an effective and ethical way. A few months ago there was a debate on this topic on {grow} that resulted in some guidelines for ghost blogging:
- The host executive should provide general ideas for a ghosted blog post and a few bullet points expressing key thoughts for the writer to work from. Obviously the writer needs to spend as much time as possible with the host to get a feel for their language and opinions.
- The executive should approve every blog post before publishing under their name.
- Content aimed at a personalized connection – such as responses in a blog comment section – ideally should be authored by the executive, not the ghost writer.
- Be sure there is an approval process in place that can handle the need for flexibility, responsiveness and the opportunistic tendencies of the social web.
- Guidelines of the corporate blog process and a list of blog contributors could be contained in an “about” section.
Do these make sense?
When parody becomes a corporate PR disaster
May 26th
When does online parody cross a line?
By now you’ve probably become aware of the “fake” BP global public relations account on Twitter spewing humorous observations such as:
“We feel terrible about spilling oil in American waters, we’ll make sure the next spill happens where the terrorists live. #bpcares”
“Just wrapped up a meeting with the EPA. Terry kept farting out loud at all the right moments. Not sure how he does it, but it’s SO FUNNY!”
“Oh man, this whole time we’ve been trying to stop SEAWATER from gushing into our OIL. Stupid Terry was holding the diagram upside down.”
According to Ad Age, the account started last Wednesday afternoon with this tweet: “We regretfully admit that something has happened off of the Gulf Coast. More to Come.”
Fewer than 50 tweets later, the feed had nearly 13,000 followers — compared to the 5,000 or so at the “real” @BP_America — and as of today, the account had about 40,000 followers. Its humorous blasts have been re-tweeted by everyone from filmmaker Michael Moore to singer Michelle Branch.
Toby Odone, a spokesman at BP, told Ad Age: “I’m not aware of whether BP has made any calls to have it taken down or addressed. People are entitled to their views on what we’re doing and we have to live with those. We are doing the best we can to deal with the current situation and to try to stop the oil from flowing and to then clean it up.”
While there have been plenty of fake Twitter accounts before, perhaps none has spread so rapidly or gained this kind of momentum. The timing is right, the content is superb, and people are eager to connect emotionally to anyone poking fun at the easy target.
Let’s take a look at some of the realities and implications of this development for our own businesses.
1) Is it legal?
According to Twitter’s guidelines, it is perfectly acceptable to set up accounts that parody real companies, celebrities, etc. as long as it is clear that it is a parody. Their rule states:
The bio should include a statement to distinguish it from the real identity, such as “This is a parody,” “This is a fan page,” “Parody Account,” “Fan Account” or “This is not affiliated with…”
The account should not, through private or public communication with other users, try to deceive or mislead others about your identity. For example, if operating a fan account, do not direct message other users implying you are the actual subject (i.e., person, band, sports team, etc.) of the fan account.
As of today, the fake account bio reads: “This page exists to get BP’s message and mission statement out into the twitterverse!”
So no, it is not an account that meets Twitter’s standards. Further, it is causing a lot of confusion because many people are actually taking this as a serious BP account.
2) What should BP do?
BP has much bigger PR problems than a rogue Twitter account. And making an issue of it and spoiling the fun would probably just heighten negativity against the company.
However, if I were working for BP right now <shudder> I would at least approach Twitter and ask it to enforce its own rules and declare clearly that this is a parody site. Given the number of people who actually think this is a real account, there is a high probability that quotes from this parody site could start showing up as legitimate quotes from the company and stress the PR department further.
Really, BP’s only real option is to withstand the public fury and and eliminate the core problem — the root cause — at the source deep in the ocean and spreading across our shores. And that is going to take years.
3) What should YOU do?
The social web has imparted a whole new sense of meaning and urgency to PR planning, monitoring and response. How have the rules changed? Or have they? What are your thoughts?
Is bigotry good for business?
Mar 24th
The comment sections in some blogs, and many online community newspapers, is becoming a cesspool of bigotry, sexism and intolerance. Nobody has struggled more with the idea of online community than the American press.
I’ve wondered why newspapers, who have so staunchly defended the integrity of the published word, would suddenly open the floodgates of stupidity just because the forum has moved to the Internet. My conclusion: Bigotry must be good for business. My friend Jack Lail disagrees. Jack is the much-respected News Director of Innovation for the Knoxville News Sentinel and a pioneer in online media. He’s re-thinking the newsroom in the context of the digital era and dealing with these difficult issues every day.
Jack and I sparred on his blog recently and he has agreed to a point-counterpoint format for {grow}.
Mark’s point:
If I submit a letter to the editor of the newspaper and comment on a news story or issue, it has to come with clear proof of who I am, and even then might be subject to editing for appropriateness. Why then, would the same newspaper allow the public commentary in their online versions to turn into a virtual free-for-all of hate? It just doesn’t make sense except that if the newspapers didn’t allow that liberal allowance for sensationalism, another media outlet or blog will — and there goes the readership and the page views that drive advertising revenues, just when traditional media need it most.
Nothing drives page views like controversy, and nothing drives controversy better than a redneck pissing match fueled by the anonymity of an online comment forum.
Some newspapers have justified this practice by explaining that our country has an important tradition of anonymous dissenters like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. But the irony is, serious dissent found on an op-ed page would require editorial identification, while the ugliness in the comment section goes unabated.
I believe the press has applied their standards inconsistently for economic reasons. They fear the anonymous comments (and readership they generate) will go elsewhere if regulated online. True?
Jack’s counterpoint:
The short answer is Web site operators don’t have the same legal liability in online comments as print publishers have with printed letters to the editors.
Yes, I believe comments increase the “stickiness” and time on site and a sense of community that articles alone can’t achieve. Anecdotally, I often hear people say the comments were better than the story (maybe in an entertaining if not enlightening way).
But basically, I don’t view comments as “letters to the editor.” I often find them more akin to callers on talk radio, where people are identified as “Jim” or “caller from Knoxville.” (If you applied the “same rigorous identification standards” to radio call-in shows, they wouldn’t have any callers.) The dynamics of online story comments are similar to what happens in forums and fairly open mailing lists.
They are, I think, a participatory experience unique to the online medium and whose benefits outweigh its negatives. That said, we’re still grappling with ways to minimize the negatives without stifling the speech.
Do we have story comments merely to generate additional page views? Maybe, but I suspect the cost of managing comments negates nearly all of the additional revenue. A page view on a news story is worth at best just a couple cents.
As Google’s economist Hal Varian recently said: “The fact of the matter is that newspapers have never made much money from news.”
Where does the {grow} community come down on this issue? Over to you …
This dialogue was inspired by a post that originally appeared on Jack’s excellent blog, Random Mumblings. His original post also contains many important references on this issue. For another timely perspective on the subject of hateful comments, read Jeff Jarvis’ blog post this week.
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